Re-entry

Okay, okay. I know I'm now eligible for the Worst Blogger Ever award. I left you with the cliff-hanger post about wishing us luck with our 20+ hours of travel home and then failed to post again for 10 days. And I truly have no excuse because she's amazing. And easy. And funny. (We're having a blast. I guess that's my excuse.)

The flights...well, it was 22 hours of parental baptism by fire. Nedy (her official nickname) is a busy kid. She slept about 6 hours of the 22 hours and demanded our undivided attention the rest of the time. (Actually, to be accurate, she demanded Dan's undivided attention the whole time. Back then--you know, 10 days ago--she favored one of us or the other each day seeming not to get the "two are better than one" concept. She's since figured that out and we're both the bee's knees now. It rocks.) Anyway, she never cried the entire time in flight. Just played and ate and bounced around and made faces and ate. Nedy is a dare devil. She was never so giggly and excited as when we hit horrble turbulance just outside Chicago. You know, the kind where the plane feels like it dropped 50 feet in 2 seconds? Yep, she laughed herself silly. But eventually--after layovers in Seoul and Seattle--we arrived in Chicago and were met by my brother Johnny and a 'KENNEDY' sign. We headed back to John's house and were met by my Mom and Dad, Aunt Janet and De Anna, Holly, Cory and Jeremy who all hung out late on a night of nasty weather to welcome us back home. It was so sweet.

The past week has flown by. Nedy and Dan moved through the jetlag much faster than I. Nedy, in fact, has been sleeping 12 hours through the night since her 3rd night home. (She's still in her stroller, but we're working on that with daytime naps in the crib hoping to transition her to sleeping there at night within a couple weeks. For now, we rock her to sleep in the rocking chair and then move her to her stroller in her room.) We initially planned on co-sleeping with her, but she sleeps soundly in her own room and I'm of the opinion that sleeping soundly through the night is great preparation for daytime bonding activity. Actually, the most surprising thing about this whole experience is that, while she is delayed physically, she seems quite advanced emotionally. She makes solid eye-contact, loves to watch our faces and mimic expressions, gives hugs and kisses, has appropriate reactions to strangers, loves her baby massages, says "Mama", "Baba", "hi!", and "book", sings and babbles, looks for our reactions to whatever she is doing, giggles and laughs, throws an occasional tantrum (always about not wanting to drink her bottle), and loves playing both with us and on her own. I am amazed by her. When I think about how her life has changed in the past several weeks and how she has blossomed in her trust of us, I am so grateful. She is such a little wonder.

Every day something new unfolds--today, for example, she learned the Obama bump. :) She still enjoys holding fingers and walking around the most, but has been working on crawling and is probably a week or so away from full crawling mobility. (God help us.) She is so determined and works so hard without frustration--she just keeps plugging away. Dan and I look up from her at least 50 times a day and smile at each other in absolute amazement that we get to be her Mama and Baba.

This past week has been full of new experiences. I fully expected to hunker down after coming home and not leave the house for weeks while she adjusted, but I've learned that so much of what I've read over the past three years in preparation really just depends on the individual kid. Nedy loves hanging out at home, but she seems to really enjoy getting out for a little while every day. So, we go somewhere each day--to see family,Target, Schlitz Audubon Center, walks around town, etc. It is so fun to watch her take in new places. And getting out of the house is good for Hank. While Nedy is adjusting beautifully, Hank is completely distraught. He has been refusing to eat since we brought him home last Sunday. For the first couple of days he walking around uttering this gutteral sound. I'm glad that stopped. We've been in conversations with our vet a couple times and have been "force feeding" him small amounts of wet food 3 times at night (12am, 3am, and 6am) because he cannot eat when Nedy is awake as the sight of food makes him gag. Not kidding. Apparently, he has this extreme nervous condition where he hyper-salivates causing him to gag whenever she is close by. It is so sad. And she just loves him. Every time she sees him she starts kicking and giggling and clicking her tongue--she learned that from us. And then he runs away in a panic. And then she shrugs her shoulders with this "what the heck?" look on her face. Hilarious. Ironic that I worried about Nedy's adjustment but she's sleeping 12 hours through the night while I'm getting up 3 times to feed the cat... Life is funny. Anyway, the past 2 days he has eaten a few bites of dry food here and there and is braving into the kitchen when we are in there with her, so I think we're seeing some improvement. (But not to worry, the vet said if we don't see improvement within a few weeks that there are mental health drugs that might help... Poor Hank.)

So, below are a few photos from last week. I'll try to do a much better job with updates. I can't wait to see what this week brings. :)